Currently, the approximation methods of the Gaussian filter by some other spline filters have been developed. However, thesc methods are only suitable for the study of one-dimensional filtering, when these methods are used for three-dimensional filtering, it is found that a rounding error and quantization error would be passed to the next in every part. In this paper, a new and high-precision implementation approach for Gaussian filter is described, which is suitable for three-dimensional reference filtering. Based on the theory of generalized B-spline function and the variational principle, the transmission characteristics of a digital filter can be changed through the sensitivity of the parameters （t1, t2）, and which can also reduce the rounding error and quantization error by the filter in a parallel form instead of the cascade form, Finally, the approximation filter of Gaussian filter is obtained. In order to verify the feasibility of the new algorithm, the reference extraction of the conventional methods are also used and compared. The experiments are conducted on the measured optical surface, and the results show that the total calculation by the new algorithm only requires 0.07 s for 480×480 data points; the amplitude deviation between the reference of the parallel form filter and the Gaussian filter is smaller; the new method is closer to the characteristic of the Gaussian filter through the analysis of three-dimensional roughness parameters, comparing with the cascade generalized B-spline approximating Gaussian. So the new algorithm is also efficient and accurate for the implementation of Gaussian filter in the application of surface roughness measurement.
The discrete Fourier transform（DFT） is used for fractional Brownian motion（FBM） surface synthesis in tribology（i.e., contact, sliding, and sealing, etc）. However, the relationship between fractal parameters（fractal dimension and scale factor） and traditional parameters, the influence of fractal parameters on surface appearance, have not been deeply discussed yet. These lead to some kind of difficulty to ensure the synthesized surfaces with ideal fractal characteristic, required traditional parameters and geometric appearance. A quantitative relationship between fractal parameters and the root mean square deviation of surface （Sq） is derived based on the energy conservation property between the space and frequency domain of DFT. Under the stability assumption, the power spectrum of a FBM surface is composed of concentric circles strictly, a series of FBM surfaces with prescribed Sq could be synthesized with given fractal dimension, scale factor, and sampling numbers, but the ten-point height（Sz）, the skewness（Ssk） and the kurtosis（Sku） are still in random, where the probability distributions of Sz and Ssk are approximately normal distribution. Furthermore, by iterative searching, a surface with desired Abbott-Firestone curve could be obtained among those surfaces. An intuitive explanation for the influence of fractal dimension and scale factor on surface appearance is obtained by discussing the effects on the ratio of energy between high and low frequency components. Based on the relationship between Sq and surface energy, a filtering method of surface with controllable Sq is proposed. The proposed research ensures the synthesized surfaces possess ideal FBM properties with prescribed Sq, offers a method for selecting desired Abbott-Firestone curve of synthesized fractal surfaces, and makes it possible to control the Sq of surfaces after filtering.
